C3/CCC Sermon Transcript for November 16, 2008 (Transcribed as Presented) The use of the term “Progressive Christianity” dates back to 1994. A small group of us had assembled because we wanted to make sure that the resources of Christianity would be available in coming generations to those people who value their intellectual integrity. We wanted Christianity to be available to people who could not in good conscience claim to believe religious propositions that they did not understand or that they thought were ridiculous. This group consisted of a few pastors, a few academics, and a few volunteers from congregations. When we began our work, it appeared very quickly that we should get ourselves organized. We should become a non-profit corporation and get tax exemption from the Internal Revenue Service. To do that we had to have a name. What were we going to call ourselves? We resisted that task because it seemed to us we should need no adjectives; we were just followers of Jesus, Christians like Christians have always been. Yet there was a kind of Christianity dominating the media that was very different from the kind of Christianity we wanted to practice. So we thought we had to have an adjective. We went through a whole list, testing and discarding. Finally, we settled on “progressive”. This is a word that nobody had been using since very early in the 20th century. Certain political reform groups had called themselves progressive, reform groups in London, England, and South Africa and here in the United States. As far as we could tell, no one had used that particular adjective for 100 years. It had never been used by Christians to describe who they were. You may have noticed, however, that groups all over the country are now calling themselves progressive. It has caused a little confusion. Most of these groups came into being shortly after the second election of George W. Bush to the presidency. Some of the political activists call themselves progressive Christians. I am in favor of most of the work that those people have done. We consider these political activists that call themselves progressive Christians to be our friends, but their primary concern is not our primary concern. We wanted Christianity to survive. And we wanted it to survive through the work of congregations. Part of our task, we felt, was to challenge congregations to be more generous in spirit, to make themselves open and available to all people. And we wanted to tell people who had been hurt by the church—alienated by the church or disgusted by the church—that there is a different kind of Christianity available in many places and that we would help them find it. That was what we meant when we decided that we would be known as progressive Christians. We had to work for a time to make sure we understood among ourselves what we meant when we used this word “progressive”. What we were talking about finally culminated in an 8-point definition. If you had a couple of hours, I’d go through it with you, but just for this morning let me highlight a few points. Starting with loyal, we wanted the world to know that we were loyal to the way of Jesus. We considered ourselves following the way that Jesus established not only in his teaching but in the example of his life. At the same time we did not want to claim that our way was superior to anybody else's way. We wanted to be clear that we had respect for most of the other religions, and we had respect for people that had no religion at all. To me the symbol of this way of looking at life is found in one of Isaiah's prophecies, my favorite. God is going to make a feast for all peoples, a great feast: wonderful food, wonderful wine. The image is of all peoples, plural. That word translated “peoples” could also mean tribes or families. It could refer to people from different ethnicities, different sexual orientations—all peoples, no exceptions. Everyone is invited. That is the picture that we wanted to uphold. The Jesus followers are also invited, but they’re not special. We wanted to think of progressive Christianity as being thoughtful: a Christianity for thinking people, a Christianity that could profit from the critical approach to the study of the Bible and of history. Progressive Christians in our minds were those people who respected and enjoyed the scholarship that goes back to the early days of the 19th century. We accept and praise those scholars from the previous centuries as well as those at work today. We are especially indebted to those people who assembled as the Jesus Seminar sponsored by the Weststar Institute. The thoughtfulness includes a positive attitude towards science. Progressive Christians do not see an absolute or a necessary conflict between the work of evolutionary biologists or partical physicists and our own way of life as followers of Jesus. We see progressive Christianity as being open—every congregation giving people a glimpse of the feast for all peoples. Being open means open to everyone without making clear, hard distinctions between kinds of people. Progressive Christianity is open to people of any gender or sexual orientation or race or ethnicity. Even more than that, Christianity is open to people who are believers and people who can’t believe much of anything. It’s open to atheists as well as conventional Christians. It is a de-emphasis of this matter of believing. In the 21st century it is hard for us to recall that the whole business of believing did not used to be very important. It’s something that arose in the middle of the 20th century. I remember a conversation I had with a retired army colonel back in 1958 during my first assignment. Colonel Wykoff came up to me one day and said, “Why is it that there are so few young adults in our congregation?” I answered, “Well, Colonel, I guess they just don’t believe it.” He said, “Believe it? Of course they don’t believe it. We never believed it. It’s a gentleman's duty to be in church on Sunday morning.” That was Christianity. It was a Christianity that I think can be dated back all the way to Saint Paul. I’m afraid the translation of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that you heard this morning was really a paraphrase, one which rather distorts what Saint Paul was writing about. He was writing about gifts of the Spirit. He did not say a gift was speaking with wisdom or speaking with knowledge. He said some people get wisdom and some people get knowledge, with the implication that lots of people are not very smart, which is true. He also said that some people get the gift of faith, not great faith. “Great” is not in the text. Some people get the gift of faith. The word that Paul used could also be translated as confidence or believing. Some people get it, and some people don’t. I happen to think it’s probably genetic, but “gift of the Spirit” works for me. Some people simply can’t believe what other people tell them. One of the most moving experiences of my life was an encounter with an elderly woman who had spent most of her adult life assisting her husband with a mission in South America among the Indians. His tradition was the Christian and Missionary Alliance. She knew when she married the man what her life would be, and she also knew that she didn’t believe a word of it. She thought in time she would believe if she taught the Indian children about Christianity from her husband’s perspective. She was sure that soon enough she’d come to believe it, but she didn’t. She began to pray every day, “God, help me believe.” But nothing changed. She still didn’t believe it. Finally she drew the conclusion that God must hate her. Can you imagine her life? Going through the motions of teaching what she did not believe, fully convinced that God must hate her because God did not give her belief. After her retirement and her return to this country, she discovered that her daughter had become part of a progressive Christian congregation. In conversations with her daughter and her daughter’s friends, she came to the conclusion that belief was just a gift that she didn’t happen to get. She pointed to her husband who was standing not far from her, and said, “See that man? Why, he can believe anything, but I never could.” Then she added, "Do you know what I've finally figured out? God doesn’t hate me, God loves us both the same.” What a transformation for her last few years. If progressive Christianity is not about believing, what is it about? I think you people know. It’s about community. I think that term in the middle of your church name is no accident. Church is about making community. It’s about people coming together: eating together, praying together, talking together, studying together—with no expectation that you will agree with one another—together pressing the questions as you get further and further into the depth of your own reality. I knew that our congregation back in Washington was working when a young woman had spoken one Sunday morning. She spoke at what we called Sermon Seminar. After the sermon people had the opportunity of saying whatever they wanted to say. This particular morning, the young woman stood up and said, “This is my second Sunday. I think you people should know I don’t believe in God. And I don’t know what to think about Jesus. But I know I need to be here.” I think that people can recognize the kind of church that she had found whenever they enter a progressive Christian congregation. It’s not about believing; it’s about being present. Once we were clear about what we meant by progressive, we decided it was time to move, to do something. Contrary to all the advice we received from well-meaning friends, we began without a business plan. We decided first of all to open up the conversation to more people and announced a forum, a conference, in Columbia, South Carolina. “Let’s go to the heart of the conservative movement and start there.” We had a great time. We had so much fun we decided that we’d do that again, the next time in Houston, Texas. When we sent out the invitations to our first conference, just as an afterthought I added a line: “If you can’t join us in Columbia, and you approve of what we are doing, send money.” Much to my surprise, people did. The money started coming in. At that point we hadn’t intended to be a membership organization, but it looked like that’s what was happening. Anyway, we decided call the people who sent money “affiliates”. Shortly after that, I got an email from a pastor in southern California who wrote, “You’re letting individuals affiliate with The Center for Progressive Christianity, how about whole congregations affiliating?” Why not? “Okay. You’re our first affiliate. We’ll tell other congregations that they can affiliate, too.” That was the beginning of the directory of progressive Christian congregations, which we have on the website so people can find our churches. People can find where this different kind of Christianity is available. Speaking of the website, that was another happy surprise. One day I got a call from an old friend, Jack Harris. He said, “I know you've got a little, simple website. What would a good one cost? I mean an up-to-date, state-of-the-art, interactive website. What would it cost to put it up and keep it going for five years?” I said, “I don’t know.” I can still remember the long pause, and then I could hear the sigh coming through the phone. Jack said, “Well, could you find out?” I attempted to. I consulted with engineers and website designers, and I got the bad news. I called him back and said, “Jack, people tell me it probably would cost around $500,000.00 to do what you’re suggesting”. Jack said, “Fine, I’ll send you the check for this year in a couple of weeks.” With the interactive website we began to be in touch with more and more people, not just in this country, but also around the world. Email is an amazing thing, and so are websites. One day I got an email from someone who wrote, “Did you know there’s a progressive Christianity network in South Australia?” I didn’t. How could there be one in Australia, and we didn’t know about it? The email also included the website. Sure enough, I went to it, and it was right there on my computer screen: “Progressive Christianity Network—South Australia.” Then I noticed that on the home page, down on the lower left hand corner, there was an icon that said, “Click here for Progressive Christianity International.” How could we have been left out? How could we not have known that something was going on in the world? And nobody had bothered to tell us. It was with some trepidation that I clicked on the icon, and do you know what I found? Us, the TCPC website. Okay, we thought, maybe that international bit is supposed to be one of our jobs. We had a couple of English pastors in our planning group who were helping us to work on the issues here in this country. So we told them, “Isn’t it about time you had your own network?” They organized a gathering in Leeds, an industrial city in northern England. The twenty-five or thirty people who attended agreed, “Yes, we need our own network.” So they arranged two meetings, one in the north of England and one in the south. The northerners and southerners on that little island don’t trust each other any more than we northerners and southerners trust each other here. They got started. You won’t be surprised to hear that the keynote speaker both in the north and in the south was none other than Jack Spong. Then we did the same thing in Canada, and again Jack Spong spoke. The Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity was under way. The Irish were a little slow. We helped organize a conference for them, but they had a little trouble getting off the ground. In all his public statements, one of the two people who agreed to help get things organized showed more interest in witches and Wicca than he did in Christianity. That made the Irish a little nervous. They also had trouble with the word progressive, but today they have a well-established network called “Open Christianity”. It covers the entire island, both the republic and the parts aligned with Britain. Unlike any of the other networks, it’s probably about half Roman Catholic. I couldn’t believe how progressive are the views of Roman Catholic monks and nuns in Ireland. It’s a marvelous network and worth paying attention to. Many people have been paying attention to the progressive Christianity networks. They’ve paid attention for several years now, and not all that attention resulted in approval. We got several emails denouncing progressive Christianity from people who said, “You can’t be Christians at all if you say that there are other ways to God besides Jesus. You’re not Christians if you don’t take the Bible literally. You’re not Christians if you don’t have standards of behavior that determine who’s in your congregation and who’s out. You can’t be Christians.” Most of these unpleasant communications ended with, “And don’t forget what Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth; and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.’” Sometimes when I got those emails, I wanted to follow the custom of H.L. Mencken. When he got angry letters, he simply wrote back, “Dear Madam or Sir, You may be right. Sincerely Yours, H.L. Mencken.” Rather than take that approach, however, I decided to answer. Maybe the person really was interested in knowing how we dealt with the Bible, how any progressive Christian might respond. Yes, that line you quote appears in John’s gospel, but have you read the whole gospel? Do you know that John warns people against taking what he writes literally? Just think about it. Very near the beginning of the gospel, he tells a story of a man named Nicodemus. Jesus is supposed to have said to Nicodemus, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew." (John 3:3) How does Nicodemus respond? “You mean I have to crawl back inside my mother’s womb and start over?” Now from our point of view that sounds pretty silly. I think that’s what John is saying. You’d be pretty silly if you took literally what Jesus said and what I’m writing. And in case you missed the Nicodemus story, further on John says that Jesus told his disciples that he was teaching them in “figures of speech”. (John 16:25) If you take John’s gospel literally, you’ve missed the point. Then take the line that was always quoted to me and put it in the context in which it appears in John’s gospel. Jesus is supposed to have said, ”In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” Now surely, nobody takes that word “house” literally: a building, a building large enough to hold all the people who have sought ultimate meaning and purpose through God. Where can you find a building of that size? It’s not possible. And recall that house has been in ancient languages, as well as in our English language, a metaphor—a metaphor that can stand for a group of connected people. Think of a monarchy. David the King and his family were known as the House of David. In modern times, the monarchy in England is the House of Windsor. “House” can be used in business; you’ve got the House of Rothchild and the House of Mellon. House is figurative language. Just picture the people of the world who are serious about finding ultimate meaning and purpose through God. Though there are countless numbers of them, Jesus is supposed to have said that he is going to make a room for his followers. Certainly this was not a room made of timbers or stone to attach to an impossibly big building. “Room” is also a metaphor. It means a place to dwell, a living space. Jesus promised, according to John, a living space for his followers. John was speaking out of his experience in a Christian community. He was speaking to people who were at least curious about Jesus when he said that if you wonder where you fit into the great scheme of things, don’t worry. Jesus is your way, your truth, your life. You’ve come this far with him. He’s the only way for you. That makes sense to me. I hope it makes sense to you. It makes me sad to think that some people who claim to take the Bible literally don’t really take it seriously. They don’t read and find out what the authors had to say. They’re more intent, at least from my perspective, on trying to prove to themselves and the world that they are God’s favorites. They want to draw a circle around their own kind. Everybody on the inside counts, and everybody on the outside of the circle doesn’t count at all. My mentor Charles Penniman said that circles are not a bad way to describe Christians, but there's another way to define a circle. Drawing on his engineering experience, he said, “A circle can be defined as a fixed point with radii.” People who find themselves well-grounded at the center of their beings don’t need any other affirmation in order to move out, move out in a way that he described as “friendly mobility”. You can move out from a solid grounding at the center of your being and be at home with all kinds of people, never having to claim that you are superior to all the others. I still think it’s kind of sad that we have to have an adjective attached to Christianity to identify our understanding of the tradition. But I’m afraid as long as there are Christians who promote a kind of religion that is dogmatic, mean-spirited, anti-intellectual or anti-gay, we’re going to need a way to differentiate ourselves and to make clear that there is another kind of Christianity. At least for the time being, I think that this other kind of Christianity will be known as “progressive”.
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